


Hear It Call In The Center Of It All

by LayALioness



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5855155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke asks Raven to fake date her, to make Bellamy jealous. But Raven isn't expecting his girlfriend to be so great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hear It Call In The Center Of It All

**Author's Note:**

> title from Thunder Clatter by Wild Cub
> 
> this ship is going to end me.

The thing is, Raven _knows_ she should say no, like, basically immediately. The moment Clarke says “Hey, um, could you maybe do me a favor?” she knows she should say “Nope, sorry, no can do. You’re on your own, Griffin.”

She knows this because she also knows that whatever the favor is, it has to do with Bellamy, and where Clarke and Bellamy are concerned, Raven has made a strict policy to not get involved under any circumstances, and she intends to honor that.

But then Clarke looks so fucking _sad_ about it, and just generally hopeless, and Raven knows she’s fucked.

She still heaves the biggest sigh she can manage though, so Clarke knows she isn’t _happy_ about it, and is really only stepping in because she is the best best friend of all time. Better then Wells even, this time.

(The biggest issue with being in a _who’s the better best friend?_ competition with someone who genuinely does not believe in competitions is that actually winning still feels a little off. There’s no point in rubbing it in if he doesn’t even _care_.)

“What’s the favor?” she asks, and Clarke brightens up immediately, just like she knew she would. Faker.

“Oh my god, Raven, you’re a life saver, seriously—anything you want, name it and I’ll make it happen, I swear. I will do your laundry for the rest of your natural-born life.”

Raven can’t help grinning a little at that—her friends all have a sort of running conspiracy that she’s going to pull a Johnny Depp and somehow manage to insert her consciousness into some version of Skynet, and become an immortal digital deity. She’s pretty sure Clarke started the whole thing as a joke during one of their drunken game nights, but Jasper, king of conspiracy theories, ran with it.

(And if she _is_ researching the possibilities of consciousness transference in her spare time on the down low, well, no one needs to know about that.)

“Alright, alright, enough with the buttering up; I already said yes, Griffin. What do you need?”

Clarke bites her lip, which is never a good sign. It’s her go-to _how do I say this without making them upset_ move. Also her _I want to ride your face_ move, but they’ve already tried and moved past that, so Raven’s pretty sure it’s the former.

“I need you to fake date me to make Bellamy jealous.” She says it all in one breath, making sure to clearly enunciate each word so Raven has no choice but to understand them. Still, she blinks up at Clarke stupidly.

“What?”

Clarke sighs, expectant, and sinks down on the couch beside her. They’re supposed to be stuffing their faces on Pad Thai and watching old _Gilmore Girls_ reruns, in preparation for the new reboot, but they haven’t even managed to turn on the TV. Clarke basically ambushed Raven the moment she showed up at her apartment, and has been nervously pacing the room ever since like one of those sad angry tigers in a zoo.

“Just for a week or two,” she assures her, like that might possibly make the scenario seem any more appealing. It certainly doesn’t make it any _less_ , but Raven’s still stuck on the whole _to make Bellamy jealous_ bit.

She’s surprised Clarke even admitted that was the reason, to be honest. On the one hand, it shows some true character development from her best friend, who has been claiming to not be in love with Raven’s _other_ best friend for the better part of three years, now.

On the other hand, it's more than a little suspicious.

“ _Why_?” Raven asks, and Clarke frowns, like she doesn’t understand the question. Raven isn’t really sure how she could make it any clearer; she’s known Bellamy wanted to marry Clarke Griffin since he showed up at her apartment and ranted about _the entitled princess with her stupid money and her stupid hair and that stupid mole above her lip_ for a solid forty-five minutes, while she mostly just played Temple Run and ignored him. He didn’t even notice.

Clarke was a little harder to read, more reserved and less emotional in general, and Raven honestly wasn’t even sure Bellamy had a chance, until the night Monty got them all drunk on Jagerbombs and Bellamy went home with Echo, while Clarke spent the rest of the night moping across Raven’s lap, whining about his tendency to wear very tight button down shirts.

“Where does he even _find_ them?” she’d slurred, and Raven nudged a glass of water towards her. Clarke just flicked at the pink straw and frowned. “At, like, the male stripper’s JC Penny?”

Raven snorted, and Clarke flicked some water in her face.

“I’m _serious_ —it’s a problem! Channing Tatum wore that exact shirt in Magic Mike, Raven, I know it. They’re _distracting_.”

Clarke was mortified in the morning, of course, but after that it was like a dam was broken; she was head over heels for Bellamy Blake, and now that Raven knew, she could finally complain about it. As it turns out, neither of Raven’s best friends handle having crushes very well.

In the end, they both seemed to decide that the best course of action was to be miserable to each other at every available moment. At first, Raven was concerned that would be it; their group would suffer through a messy divorce, and she’d be forced into shared custody.

But instead, she’s pretty sure they both actually _like_ the constant arguing, in a weird, passive aggressive foreplay sort of way.

And, since the beginning, Raven has resolutely _stayed out of it_. She’s not really sure how she’s ended up in the position of having one night stands with _both_ of her best friends, who are now in love with each other, but she’s pretty sure her being stuck in the middle of it will only agitate things further.

“Because he has a girlfriend,” Clarke says miserably, and suddenly it all makes sense.

“Who the fuck,” Raven blurts, unable to stop herself because—since when does Bellamy Blake _date_? And if he _is_ finally dating, why the hell is it not Clarke?

Clarke shrugs, trying for nonchalance but falling a little short. “I don’t know, I haven’t met her. Her name’s Gina and she works at the college with him. Apparently it’s only been a few weeks, but things are good.” Here, she hesitates, and Raven eyes her, suspicious. So far today she’s only had half of one hard apple cider, and she is decidedly not drunk enough for this.

“He may have asked me to go on a double date,” Clarke says, cringing.

Raven raises a brow, unimpressed. She’d honestly expected better from her, although she’s not sure why; her friends have a history of being complete idiots when emotions are involved. She should be used to it by now. Hell, fake dating probably should have been her first guess. She’s not even really that surprised, to be honest. They always take _the_ most complicated route, which is why they never get anywhere.

“And why would he do that?” she asks, nudging Clarke’s thigh with her foot.

Clarke makes a face. “Because I may have told him I was seeing someone too.”

“Did you say it was me?”

“No! I just panicked; I didn’t offer any details. Then he invited me and my _significant other_ out to dinner with them, and I said we’d be there, and—I’m sorry, Raven, really. But I don’t have anyone else I can ask.”

Raven knows that isn’t strictly true. Clarke is a gorgeous, witty blonde, perfectly capable of earning herself a date to some fancy dinner. But she also knows Clarke would never lie to lead a stranger on, and none of her other friends would feel comfortable lying for her—except maybe Jasper, but Bellamy would call bullshit within a second if Jasper showed up on Clarke’s arm.

“Fine,” she says, drawing the word out dramatically and heaving another, even _bigger_ sigh, just to really get her point across. “But you owe me.”

“Laundry for the rest of your life,” Clarke swears solemnly, and Raven hums.

“How about instead, if Bellamy doesn’t pull his head out of his ass and confess his pathetic and undying love to you, you eat me out after?”

Clarke grins, pressing a sloppy, relieved kiss to Raven’s cheek. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” Raven agrees, finally reaching for the remote. She’s still a little worried, still convinced she should call the whole thing off before they make everything way too complicated, but if she did, Clarke would just post some ad on Craigslist or something offering an outrageous amount of money and she’d probably end up sold to some drug kingpin. At least this way, Raven can protect her from Rohypnol.

Friends don’t let friends hire fake dates on Craigslist.

“Will he even believe us?” she asks, suddenly, and Clarke blinks over at her, surprised, half of a very long noodle still dangling from her mouth.

She slurps up the noodle and swallows. “I figured, he knows we hang out at least twice a week, just the two of us, and we could just say things picked up then.”

Raven can’t help smirking a little. “You want to start our relationship off of Netflix and Chill? How romantic.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “I’m a catch.”

“Why didn’t we tell him, in this hypothetical?”

Clarke shrugs, digging a spork through her carton, searching for all the chunks of broccoli, since she likes to eat those first. “We wanted to make sure it was something real this time before telling anyone.”

It sounds plausible enough, so Raven agrees, and refuses to even think about the date itself until that Thursday, when she shows up to the restaurant—some Italian place that’s so fancy it makes her feel jittery. Even the _air_ smells rich—and promptly begins to panic when she sees the others waiting for her inside.

Raven’s seen Bellamy a few times since her conversation with Clarke. She’s had several opportunities to tell him about their relationship, and she knows that when he realizes she’d kept it a secret, he’ll be crushed.

But she’s not about to stand up Clarke; she’ll be the best damned fake girlfriend anyone’s ever had, and Bellamy will forgive her eventually, once he finds out she only did it so he and Clarke will finally find true love and get married and have lots of pretty babies with incredibly good hair.

Bellamy shoots her a warm, if mildly confused, smile when she reaches their table, and she can tell he hasn’t figured it out yet. She shoots a glance at Clarke, who is resolutely staring at her menu. They’re _idiots_.

“Reyes,” he says cheerfully enough, raising a brow at her red Date Dress. He’s only seen it once before, when she wore it on her blind date with Wick, which ended with her showing up at their bar so she could do shots with her friends and just generally forget about feelings. “Hot date tonight?”

Raven swallows. She can _do_ this—she’s Raven _goddamned_ Reyes. She’s built rockets out of spare car parts, before. She’s survived being accidentally shot in a drive-by. She’s survived Gamergate.

 _It’s for Clarke,_ she reminds herself, and grins. “Yeah, actually. And here she is.” She bends down to give Clarke a perfunctory kiss—it’s a little wet, because Clarke _always_ gives wet kisses, like she can’t really help herself, or control her tongue. Eventually, she pulls back and sits down, chancing a glance at Bellamy.

His entire face has gone blank, which isn’t necessarily a great sign, but at least he isn’t shouting. Yet.

Raven sneaks a look at Clarke, who’s wide-eyed, caught in Bellamy’s gaze like he has a physical hold on her. They do this sometimes; have entire conversations without ever saying a word. Raven would be lying if she said she’s never been jealous—she knows they love her, of course, but. It’s hard, knowing that they’ll always be each other’s favorite, and she’ll always come in second place.

She can at least be their best friend, though, and so she clings to that, because Raven Reyes has very few things that are her own, but her friendships are what she treasures most.

Well, and the rockets.

Raven takes the moment of distraction to finally take in Bellamy’s girlfriend—Gina. She’d written the name down in angry red letters on a post-it and stuck it on the bathroom mirror, so she wouldn’t forget.

The first thing she notices about Gina is that she’s very pretty. Which isn’t a big deal; Raven finds most people pretty. Everyone’s beautiful in some sort of way—but Gina is a _special_ sort of pretty, the sort that feels like a light bulb lives inside her, glowing softly and illuminating everything that comes close, making them just that little bit brighter.

The second thing she notices, is her mouth. That's not a big deal either--she's just wearing a very nice shade of lipstick, is all.

“Are they always like this?” Gina asks, but she doesn’t look at all bothered, the way a girlfriend probably should be, if she had to witness her boyfriend having a heated silent conversation with another girl. Instead, she mostly seems bemused.

“Basically,” Raven confirms, and Gina smiles.

Raven thinks _oh no_.

Raven met Clarke when she trailed her boyfriend to a building that was decidedly _not_ the library, where he’d claimed to be headed. She’d been filling her own head with excuses the whole time—maybe he left something at the office and was grabbing it from a coworker; maybe his boss lived in the building and he needed some advice; maybe he was visiting a cousin she didn’t know about.

But she knew, deep down, from the moment she set out after him. She knew that if it wasn’t true, she wouldn’t feel so sick to her stomach. Raven learned at an early age to trust her instincts, and they’d never let her down.

They didn’t then, either.

So she met Clarke, and they both deleted Finn from their phone contacts and their lives, and then they got drunk on some weird rich-people liquor Clarke had stolen from one of her mom’s fancy benefits, and they had sex. It was messy, emotional, for-all-the-wrong-reasons sex, but it was nice, and Clarke kissed Raven in her doorway the next morning, and told her to swing by again whenever she wanted.

She almost didn’t, but—Raven had never been the best, at making friends. It didn’t come very naturally to her; she had a few core people in her life that she cared about, but then she put everything she had into them, so there was hardly anything left for others. Clarke, like Bellamy, had somehow been easy. They didn’t take so much from her.

It had seemed so natural then, to introduce Clarke to Bellamy. They were her two favorite people, and so _of course_ they’d get along.

The first time they met each other, Clarke threatened to set his shoes on fire.

The second time, she actually did.

It took Raven a few weeks to realize that when they called each other _stubborn princess_ and _shallow dickhead_ , they actually sounded a little bit _fond_.

Honestly it was more irritating than anything; like middle school all over again, sending notes through mutual friends, checking square boxes in the bathroom instead of just asking them out, face to face.

Raven had assumed this would be the defining moment; finally, they’d be confronted with their emotions, and they’d _have_ to acknowledge them, and then take a taxi cab off into the sunset. But now, chatting with Gina over the bottle of wine that costs more than Raven’s rent, watching the way the light catches in her curls, or the whites of her teeth, Raven feels her stomach start to drop.

She’d thought it would be the perfect solution; it was all pretend, and so no one ended up hurt, and her best friends could finally be together, but—

It isn’t pretend, for Gina. She’ll have to watch her boyfriend leave with someone else, and she might not be heartbroken, but Raven knows what it feels like to be traded in for someone different. To be conditioned to think she’s not good enough. To be convinced she’s not enough.

Raven should tell her, she knows. If the roles were reversed, she'd want her to tell her.

But if she says nothing, and lets Bellamy leave with Clarke, she might get Gina. She's not totally convinced it's worth it, but she's not  _perfect_ , and Raven's never really had a  _type_ , but if she did, Gina would be it. 

Gina laughs at something she’s said; one of the dumb rocket science puns that Clarke suffers through and Bellamy vocally hates. She picks up her wine glass, and Raven glimpses a flash of ink on the inside of her wrist, some sort of fancy calligraphy font, and a short word that she can’t make out.

She feels her stomach flip for a different reason.

“Gina,” Raven says—that’s when the shouting finally starts.

“Clarke, can I talk to you outside?” Bellamy grinds out, and Raven looks over to see the muscle in his jaw twitching, which only happens when he’s mad. Clarke glares back at him, just as tense.

“No,” she says, petulant. “Whatever you want to say to me, you can say in front of Raven.”

Bellamy’s eyes flick over to Raven, who does her best to seem unimpressed and completely guiltless. He glances back to Clarke with a grimace. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to hear it,” he says, and there’s a desperation at the edge of his tone.

“Then maybe it shouldn’t be said,” Clarke huffs, bordering on hysteria, and Raven winces at the sound. It’s only a matter of seconds, now. Neither of them ever seem to last very long before exploding, and the fallout is always legendary. See: Clarke setting Bellamy’s shoes on fire.

“No, it really should,” he growls, and stands up so suddenly that the table tips, dishes clattering against each other, so the room goes quiet as everyone stares.

Clarke’s cheeks are nearly as red as Raven’s dress, either from embarrassment or her own rage, it’s hard to tell. And then she’s wrenching herself from her seat, storming up to him on her toes, so she can look taller, jabbing a pointy finger into his chest. “You can’t just make a scene whenever you don’t like something!” she exclaims, much too loud for the kind of restaurant that Al Pacino probably used to frequent.

Bellamy stares down at her, outraged. “ _I_ can’t make a scene?” he roars, which sort of destroys his argument, or at least proves Clarke’s. “Who’s the one that commits fucking _arson_ just because she doesn’t get the last word?”

“That was one time,” Clarke shouts, poking him again, harder. “And I didn’t mean to!”

Bellamy scoffs. “A likely story—”

The scene is suddenly interrupted by a waiter dressed like the butler from _Clue_ , looking surprisingly nonplussed about it all. “I’m sorry sir and madam,” he says, not sounding sorry at all, “But I must ask you both to leave the premises.”

For a long stretch, Bellamy and Clarke simply gape at the waiter like he’s just told them they each have two heads. They snap out of it after a moment, and Clarke whirls on Bellamy immediately, even as he tugs her by the arm towards the door.

“I can’t _believe_ you got us kicked out,” she’s still ranting as they walk outside, continuing down the sidewalk and out of sight.

Raven stares after them for a moment, and then turns back to Gina with a shrug. “Think they’ll notice that they both left their dates behind?”

Gina grins a little, and honestly Raven has never felt so thrown by someone. “Eventually, I’m sure,” she says, and then gives a small sigh. “Is it sad that I’m actually a little annoyed that this worked? When Bellamy first asked me to pretend to date him, I thought for sure it would go horribly.”

Raven’s throat goes suddenly dry as she watches Gina study the wine in her glass, the rim a little smudged by the dark wax of her lipstick, which Raven sort of really wants to lick off, preferably before getting to lick the rest of her.

“Well, they did get kicked out,” she points out.

“Yeah, but now they get to have some sort of romantic declaration in the middle of downtown,” Gina says. “It’ll be totally cliché, and great.”

Raven laughs, downing the rest of her wine before writing out a check—Bellamy and Clarke seriously owe her. Or maybe it’s the other way around. “Want to get out of here?”

Gina’s grin splits her face beautifully, and she lets Raven tangle their hands together as they stand up. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Raven lets Gina pick where they go next, which is how they end up crammed into a booth at some twenty-four hour Waffle House with flickering bulbs with little black dots inside that Raven’s pretty convinced are dead flies.

“But the waffles are good,” Gina points out, mouth filled with syrupy waffle. “And that’s what matters.”

“If you say so,” Raven grumbles, and Gina moves so that their feet rub together beneath the table.

Raven’s never really been one for labels—she just doesn’t see the point in them. She likes who she likes, for the reasons she likes them, and that’s that. Clarke was the first girl she every kissed, ever _wanted_ to kiss, really, and since then there have been a few times she’s passed a pretty redhead on the street, or seen a toothy girl grin at her on the subway, and she’s _wondered_.

But Gina’s the first one she’s truly _wanted_ , the first one who seemed so possible, making her stomach twist up like when she was twelve years old and first met Finn Collins.

Gina talks through dinner—Raven learns that she’s a full-time bartender at the bar on campus, and a part-time book-finder, managing to help the college acquire most of its library’s collection. She’s an only child, and was born late, to two older parents who are quite a bit older now, and live in a retirement home upstate. She learns that she first met Bellamy Blake when he showed up at her bar, drunk and failing to hit on her while intermittently gushing about someone named _princess_.

“I thought she was his cat or something, at first,” she admits, and Raven nearly chokes on her hashbrowns.

In turn, Raven tells her about growing up in a sticky-hot state, speaking two languages so completely that she sometimes _thought_ in two languages, too. She tells her about losing her mom to alcohol, about losing Finn, but gaining Clarke and Bellamy. She even tells her about the rockets.

Gina walks her home, just a few blocks away, and stands hopeful with her head tipped back, still shining in the dim streetlamp light.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Raven warns, and Gina hums against her mouth, moving until they fit together perfectly. Raven lets her hands get knotted up in her curls, lets her melt down against her, shivering, but not from the cold.

“Don’t worry,” Gina says, pulling back with a smirk that makes Raven’s breath hitch. “I grade on a curve.”

Raven wakes sometime in the morning—she’s not entirely sure what time it is, just that it’s _too goddamned early to be awake_ —to the sound of a horse neighing. It’s the alert to let her know that Clarke’s sent a text, and she fumbles for her phone, charging on the bedside table.

Beside her, Gina grumbles in her sleep, curling a little further into Raven’s warmth. She reaches a hand out to card through her hair, and feels her hum into the mattress.

_Sorry for ditching you guys last night! Bellamy wants to know if Gina got home okay._

Raven grins at the screen. _tell ur bf his fake gf is more than ok and also u 2 owe me. i demand either a brand new xbox or u name ur firstborn after me_

 _Laundry forever_ , Clarke texts back, with a dozen star emoji’s. And then, _Sorry again about the worst date ever. Your sacrifice is duly noted and will be sung about for ages to come._

Raven glances over at Gina, face half on the skin of Raven’s shoulder, smiling in her sleep, eyes squinted shut. She switches her phone into camera mode, and angles it so only their matching grins are visible.

She sends it to Clarke with the caption _ive had worse dates_ and then turns her phone off, tossing an arm around Gina’s waist, fading back to sleep.


End file.
